SSIS 2012: Empty toolbox?

This is an annoying problem I have had a few times: I open a SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) project in SSDT, and see that the Toolbox pane is empty, displaying a “There are no usable controls in this group. Drag an item onto this text to add it to the toolbox.”. What the? What happened to all my SSIS tasks? Turns out, SSDT has two toolboxes: one called “Toolbox” and a new one called “SSIS Toolbox“. So, I had the “Toolbox” window open when I really just needed the “SSIS Toolbox” open. So I go to the “View” menu item, but “SSIS Toolbox” is not listed! Instead, there are two new buttons on the far-right of the screenshot below, with the second the button to click to open the “SSIS Toolbox”:

Very confusing! Hopefully this will help you avoid the confusion and wasted time I had encountered looking for my SSIS tasks.

UPDATE: You will see a “SSIS Toolbox” under View -> Other Windows if the a dtsx window has the focus (along with menu items “Variables”, “Log Events”, and “Getting Started”), but not if any other window has the focus. Very confusing as that menu item should always appear no matter what window has the focus.

More info:

Where’s My SSIS Toolbox?!

Comments

SSIS 2012: Empty toolbox? — 65 Comments

Travis Gan on January 29, 2013 at 1:23 pm said:

Thanks for pointing it out of that two buttons. Now that will become my shortcuts! I have been doing the long way by making sure I am on the dtsx window, then click on View->Other Windows->SSIS Toolbox (the SSIS Toolbox option won’t show if you are on other windows)

Reply ↓
- James Serra on January 29, 2013 at 2:25 pm said:
  
  Thanks for pointing out you can see the SSIS Toolbox option if the dtsx window has the focus. I never noticed that! It really should display all the time.
  
  Reply ↓
Shyam Viking on January 30, 2013 at 12:24 am said:

Thanks for blogging on this nice point. Coincidentally I had been puzzled on this, while I was on the job of building a package. Now your tip will help me.

Cheers!

Reply ↓
Charles Jenkins on May 14, 2013 at 1:33 pm said:

Thank you! I was also saying “What the?” until I found this post.

Reply ↓
David Kats on September 10, 2013 at 11:51 am said:

Thank you very much James! – Your post has saved me time to research this WT( ) issue.

Reply ↓
Rama on December 23, 2013 at 5:47 pm said:

Thanks a Ton!! was wondering where my toolbox had disapperared!! This article saved much of my time

Reply ↓
andriy on January 1, 2014 at 6:59 pm said:

Thanks James!

Reply ↓
Paul Turley on April 4, 2014 at 12:02 am said:

Thanks for the helpful post, James. As I began searching for a resolution, I was pleased to see this post from one of my favorite bloggers.

Reply ↓
- James Serra on April 4, 2014 at 11:40 pm said:
  
  Glad to help Paul!
  
  Reply ↓
Ravi A on April 10, 2014 at 6:55 pm said:

Thanks for the tip!

Reply ↓
Linda on May 2, 2014 at 10:16 am said:

Thanks for posting this. You just saved me a lot of time!

Reply ↓
Andy on June 12, 2014 at 5:19 am said:

Thanks for pointing this out. This has saved me time.

Reply ↓
Hsahand on July 24, 2014 at 1:27 pm said:

Thanks mate, helped me a lot.

Reply ↓
Harry on July 25, 2014 at 9:40 am said:

Yes, I have been looking for this for half an hour and you rock! Thanks for sharing.

Reply ↓
Richard Reukema on August 21, 2014 at 12:17 pm said:

Helped a me in VS2013 (which is actually V12.30723.00). It took me forever to install SSIS into VS2013! Thanks!

Reply ↓
sirisha on October 30, 2014 at 12:27 pm said:

This one helped me a lot. thanks

Reply ↓
Bat Masterson Jr. on October 30, 2014 at 3:30 pm said:

This is a recurring problem with MS developer tools. Finding the most basic and commonly-used tools in the development environments can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. They really need some kind of usability czar to rethink their approach.

Reply ↓
dannymothobi on December 3, 2014 at 2:38 am said:

thanks morena, nearly hit the roof … very helpful

Reply ↓
Jay Tan on December 23, 2014 at 3:10 pm said:

Thank you for this. Your post save me hours of frustration.

Reply ↓
Sima on February 10, 2015 at 5:41 pm said:

Thanks so much. that was so helpful and saved my time.

Reply ↓
Michael on February 12, 2015 at 8:29 am said:

Thanks Paul!

Reply ↓
- Michael on February 12, 2015 at 8:30 am said:
  
  Whoops! I mean James 😛
  
  Reply ↓
Ben on February 28, 2015 at 2:46 pm said:

Thanks! That was most helpful!

Reply ↓
Jose on March 10, 2015 at 6:35 am said:

Thank you! very helpful!

Reply ↓
nisha on March 10, 2015 at 6:59 pm said:

Thank you, this really saved my time 🙂

Reply ↓
Bat Masterson on March 12, 2015 at 4:24 pm said:

Wow. That’s intuitive ….. NOT!
Thanks, James. I sometimes wonder what these MS tool designers are thinking.

Reply ↓
sss on March 20, 2015 at 5:48 am said:

thanks

Reply ↓
gbaja biamila on March 26, 2015 at 1:29 pm said:

Thank you, you saved me a lot of time

Reply ↓
iulya on April 27, 2015 at 5:01 am said:

Hi!
I’ve tried to do these steps. But I haven’t got the two icons which are located on the top right corner, and I haven’t got my SSIS Toolbox. It’s awful =((
I was thinking may is it shown when I create a project (dft)? But I am needed this toolbox for create automatic backup, it’ s not a project.
I hope for your help=)

Reply ↓
Reenu on May 4, 2015 at 4:59 pm said:

what is the point of having an empty toolbox then if all we use is SSIS toolbox. Something is not right.

Reply ↓
sean on June 5, 2015 at 4:16 am said:

Thanks that’s very useful

Reply ↓
Milan on August 8, 2015 at 5:49 am said:

Thank you Sir!

Reply ↓
zhda on August 11, 2015 at 9:21 am said:

Thanks for the tip!

Reply ↓
raoul on August 12, 2015 at 4:49 pm said:

how did you get your icons to be colorful? my ssis toolbox icon is black and white.

Reply ↓
Satyam on August 31, 2015 at 12:00 pm said:

Thank you, it saved my time

Reply ↓
Pingback:Missing SSIS toolbox in Visual Studio 2013 / SQL Server 2014 | Matt40k
Shihab Jamil on September 15, 2015 at 6:15 am said:

Thanks a ton to James and Travis 🙂

Reply ↓
JY on September 17, 2015 at 7:14 am said:

AAAH! Awesome thanks!

Reply ↓
Joel on September 24, 2015 at 5:18 am said:

Thank you. I thought this was related to my having installed SQL Server 2016 CTP and had run repairs and all sorts.

What were they thinking! Regardless this helped me a lot.

Reply ↓
Doug on October 8, 2015 at 4:32 pm said:

Thanks so much! That was driving me nuts.

Reply ↓
Ooko John on October 23, 2015 at 6:27 pm said:

Out of experience, I detested going through the Registry as other blogs had suggested! I had started on the road through repair (I actually did one pass) and possibly a fresh installation when I thought of searching the Internet just once more. Thanks a lot Jame!!!

Reply ↓
SUBHOLINA DEB on October 30, 2015 at 1:23 am said:

thanks for pointing the two buttons..

Reply ↓
omar on December 2, 2015 at 6:31 am said:

Thank you very much. i was going insane

Reply ↓
Pedagogy on December 20, 2015 at 12:49 am said:

Thanks a ton, saved heavily on time.

Reply ↓
Shiva on December 28, 2015 at 9:11 am said:

Thanks James! Very helpful.

Reply ↓
Stephen on December 29, 2015 at 6:00 pm said:

This helped me today, thanks!

Reply ↓
Thomas on February 5, 2016 at 8:14 am said:

Thanks you have being helpful.

Reply ↓
Salman on February 10, 2016 at 11:10 am said:

3 years later this is still helping others, thanks!

Reply ↓
Tim on March 4, 2016 at 6:44 pm said:

Thanks just helped me!

Reply ↓
Daniel on March 17, 2016 at 9:50 am said:

Thanks just helped me!

Reply ↓
Kate on April 13, 2016 at 6:08 pm said:

Yep this is still helping people – thanks so much.

Reply ↓
Loomah on April 18, 2016 at 10:20 am said:

this keeps coming up top of my search for adding new tools to the (ssis) toolbox but it doean’t cover that – anybody know how to add/remove (eg CodePlex) tools in SSDT?

Reply ↓
- bhavesh on April 22, 2016 at 8:33 am said:
  
  did you solved the above problem….@loomah
  
  Reply ↓
  - Loomah on April 22, 2016 at 12:33 pm said:
    
    no, still trying to get my head round what should be really straight forward!
    
    Reply ↓
mtoha on April 27, 2016 at 12:12 am said:

Very confusing..

Thank you sir for your suggestion

Reply ↓
Petr on May 12, 2016 at 9:25 am said:

Thanks a lot!!!!

Reply ↓
karol on June 14, 2016 at 7:05 am said:

thanks a lot!

Reply ↓
Chris on June 29, 2016 at 4:33 pm said:

Your;s was 12th in the list returned by Google and the only one that addressed the actual issue….WTF did MS hide the toolbox? lol

Thank you for taking the time to write it up

Reply ↓
Jen W on July 11, 2016 at 12:02 pm said:

Thank you so much – saved me a lot of time figuring this out

Reply ↓
Paresh Motiwala on July 13, 2016 at 11:39 am said:

this was great, strangely I had done this long time back….but totally forgot about it since I don’t develop much

Reply ↓
Jim Horn on July 15, 2016 at 11:15 am said:

Thanks James..

Reply ↓
Bill on November 4, 2016 at 7:29 am said:

Thanks!
Have been frustratingly putting up with not having the toolbox open by
relying on copying, pasting and modifying existing controls, but it became
an issue when I needed something different.
I’ve been closing and re-opening Visual Studio in hopes that it would resolve
itself, which obviously did not, even tried re-starting my computer, thinking
that it was being cause by something else.
Eventually, I google searched and found this posting.
Who would have thought that there are two different Toolbox’s……. really confusing.
Again “THANKS!”

Reply ↓
Suma THomas on November 23, 2016 at 12:17 pm said:

Thank you !

Reply ↓
Stephen on November 24, 2016 at 6:34 am said:

Thanks a lot for this post!
Ok I understand that one wants to put it in the ‘Other Windows’ section. I don’t understand why the old menu item still exists.
I wonder what the use is for the ‘normal’ Toolbox button now.

Reply ↓
jeff on February 28, 2017 at 4:34 pm said:

Thank you so much! So simple too hahaha!

Reply ↓

James Serra's Blog

Big Data and Data Warehousing

Comments

SSIS 2012: Empty toolbox? — 65 Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Share:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply